While eating my dinner humble--of porterhouse steak and peas, and honey from bees that bumble, and maybe imported cheese--I think, with a bitter feeling, of insolent money kings, who, drunk with their wealth and reeling, condemn me to eat such things. The pirate and banknote monger still gloat o'er their golden stacks, while I must appease my hunger with oysters and canvasbacks. The plutocrat has his chuffer, a minion of greed and pelf; the poor man must weep and suffer, and drive his own car himself. The plutocrat homeward totters with diamonds to load his girls, and meanwhile my wife and daughters must struggle along with pearls. In silk, with a trademark Latin, the plutocrat's wife appears, and I can afford but satin to tog out my dimpled dears. The plute has a splendid palace, with pictures and Persian rugs; he drinks from a silver chalice and laughs at the poor men's jugs, and I, in my lowly cottage, that's shadowed by tree and vine, fill up on mock turtle pottage, with only three kinds of wine! It's time for a revolution, to punish the wealthy ones! I'll furnish the elocution if you'll bring the bombs and guns! THE WORKERS Here's to the man who labors and does it with a song! He stimulates his neighbors and helps the world along! I like the men who do things, who hustle and achieve; the men who saw and glue things, and spin and dig and weave. Man earns his bread in sweat or in blood since Adam sinned; and bales of hay are better than are your bales of wind. Man groans beneath his burden, beneath the chain he wears; and still the toiler's guerdon is worth the pain he bears. For there's no satisfaction beneath the bending sky like that the man of action enjoys when night is nigh. To look back o'er the winding and dark and rocky road, and know you bore your grinding and soul-fatiguing load-- As strong men ought to bear it, through all the stress and strife--that's the reward of merit--that is the balm of life! I like the men who do things, who plow and sow and reap, who build and delve and hew things while dreamers are asleep. THE UTILITARIAN We sat around the stove discoursing of mighty deeds that we had done; of struggling up the Alps and forcing our way to summits then unwon; of fights with lions and hyenas, of facing grim and ghostly shapes, of dodging bailiffs and subpoenas, and many perilous escapes. And one sat by, distraught and gloomy, and listened to each stirring tale; his beard was long, his eyes were rheumy, his nose was red, his aspect stale. And this old pilgrim, dour and hoary, on all our pleasure drew the noose; for, at the end of every story, he'd sadly ask: "What was the use?"